Archive for Email Marketing Tips – Page 3

Find Out What Readers Want But Avoid Faulty Assumptions

By Patsi Krakoff
Monday, June 9th, 2008

Question_key
We recently asked our ezine subscribers (Savvy eBiz Tips) if they prefer to get it weekly or every two weeks. The results were amazing…and misleading.

At first we got a lot of responses from readers who raved about the ezine, and how valuable the tips were, and how ours was one of the few they read every week. It would have been easy to smile, give ourselves a pat on the back, assume we were doing a good job and continue on our merry way.

After a few days we got other responses, about half of them saying weekly, then half of them voting for bi-weekly. And after about a week, the tally was clearly in favor of bi-weekly.

We realized that even if our voting tally was accurate, our survey would never be an accurate gauge of what all our readers wanted. With email, you have to account for the readers who don’t open your message and don’t answer the survey. Those are people that probably suffer the most from email overload, which was what we wanted to measure.

Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, Email Marketing Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

Top Ten Reasons to Do an Ezine AND a Blog

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

Yesterday I wrote about this article published in 2005. I’m republishing it here for you to consider whether these reasons are still valid today in 2008. Hit the comment link and let me know what you think.

Top Ten Reasons to Publish an Ezine AND a Blog
By Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad (c) 2005

Blogs are the hottest thing going these days when it comes to marketing on the Internet. A blog is a way of delivering your messages and articles to clients. They are a like personal web sites, easy to create and far less expensive than traditional web sites.

Just when you thought you were mastering the tasks of ezines and newsletters, along comes blogging, and you have to ask yourself:

• Do I really need a blog?
• Isn’t an email ezine or newsletter doing the same thing?
• Should I do both?
• Are these two marketing tools going to eat up all my time, energy and money?
• What’s the best way to spend my resources here so that I can get clients and results out of my marketing efforts?

Here are ten reasons why you should pay attention to this new blogging revolution and do both an ezine and a blog.

Read More→

Categories : Content Marketing, Email Marketing Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing

Email Marketing: a list of resources

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Email_keys
I don’t publish much anymore about ezines and email marketing. Not that they aren’t important; they are. It’s  hard to keep up with the tech side of this knowledge base. I’d like to direct you to a list of resources for newsletter and email marketing, everything from testing, deliverability, design, spam, etc.

Visit this post and have fun reading this quite comprehensive list of resources: 100+ tools & tutorials to optimize your email marketing campaigns.

Categories : Email Marketing Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

Writing on the Web: New Blog Name

By Patsi Krakoff
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007

Here’s why I’ve changed this blog’s name from CoachEzines, to Writing on the Web: I started in 2004 primarily focusing on writing great ezines and blogs, but today’s Internet marketing includes many more ways to communicate. If you want to leverage the Internet to Attract, Sell, and Profit, you must learn new ways of Writing on the Web.

Read this page if you want to know more: Why Writing on the Web is Key to Internet Marketing

Categories : About Blogs, Content Marketing, Email Marketing Tips, On Writing Better, Online Marketing, Pathway to Profits, Writing for the Web

The Yale Economic Review: Evil spammer???

By Patsi Krakoff
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

Even when you follow the rules and use opt in lists and avoid overly promotional emails, you can get your emails blocked! We recently discovered our emails being blocked because of "spam content" – but it wasn’t  us that was reported as the offending culprit.

Our email signatures contained links to our Web pages hosted by Hostgator, a hosting service. Hostgator has one of their other sites reported as a spammer. I researched the IP address on SpamHaus and found that the offender is none other than The Yale Economic Review!

Because The Yale magazine was reported for spam, our sites which are hosted on the same server get tagged as spam! I don’t think many people know this can happen to them.

Related post:
Evil Spammers: The Yale Economic Review?

Categories : Email Marketing Tips, Online Marketing

List Building & Segmenting with Autoresponders

By Patsi Krakoff
Saturday, August 25th, 2007

Cat_fishing
Let’s suppose you want to build a list of people interested in one part of your business related to a product you sell or a service you provide. Offer a 7 part mini-course or tutorial on how to accomplish a certain task.

The reason to do this is obvious: you shouldn’t be overtly marketing a product on your blog that is designed to inform and build relationships to a broader audience.

You make an offer on your blog or in your ezine: those people interested in learning more about how to do "XYZ" can go to a landing page, register their email address and get the 7 step tutorial.

Deliver the tutorial over the span of a week via autoresponder. Make it informational and helpful, including the benefits of your own product or services related to the task.

At some point in the tutorial you’ll want to start offering a call to action to actually buy the product or contact you.

After the tutorial is over, follow-up with related content that allows you to repeat the call to action. The key is to continue to offer value combined with your offer. Don’t send too many email messages, however, be respectful of people’s time and tolerance for promotional material.

To see an example of how I wrote a series of autoresponders, go here and sign up for a 7 part series on writing successful ezines.

To learn and use autoresponders, I recommend KickStartCart.

Categories : Email Marketing Tips, List Building Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing

Ezine Alternatives: Which one gets the job done best?

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, August 24th, 2007

Shocked_girl
Lately I’ve been wondering about ezines and subscriber lists: how much energy should you spend on this?

Obviously, if you’ve got a large list, publishing a regular ezine makes sense; also if your list is small but your open rates are 40% or more. Your ezIne should get your message out to people who want it and who are prospects for your business.

There are alternatives to publishing an ezine, and readers may be more inclined to register their email addresses for these:

  1. An email autoresponder series such as a tutorial or mini-course: people are more likely to sign up for a 10-point tutorial or a 7-day e-course that is specific and has a start and end point.
  2. A white paper: a well-written white paper that informs and educates can work well to generate leads.
  3. A blog that readers can subscribe to and get updates via email: because blog posts are usually short and to the point, readers may prefer to read them over lengthy newsletters.

I have all three of these plus two ezines. Not every professional has time to do all. As far as effectiveness in getting your message out to prospects and building a list, which method do you think works the best for you and your business?

To read a recent discussion of ezines vs blogs, go here.

Categories : Email Marketing Tips, Getting Read, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Online Marketing

Got a New Subscriber? 7 tips for writing a great first message

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, August 16th, 2007

Sign_up
What do you say to a new subscriber to your ezine? That first email may be one of the best times to communicate to a new prospect. It’s certainly one time they open and read your message.

My advice? Skip the canned and expected confirmation message that everyone sends and write in an original voice. Be friendly and clear about what they can expect next, and give them an unexpected bonus.

Here are 7 other tips from the Email Experience Council:

1. Use a recognizable "from" line and a subject line that includes the brand name.

2. Fulfill email subscriptions quickly.

3. Be clear on "what comes next" in terms of content and frequency.

4. Ask them to add your address to their address book.

5. Offer something of value for signing up.

6. Use a series of onboarding emails to introduce them to your offerings.

7. Don’t be afraid to include promotional content in welcome emails to capitalize on the high read rates.

Categories : Email Marketing Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks, Writing Better Ezines

Ezine Critique: This one’s a bummer

By Patsi Krakoff
Friday, June 22nd, 2007

Hi <$firstname$>,

Warm and fuzzy yet?

Don’t you love it when someone reaches out to you this way? For anyone who uses Kick Start Cart or one of the other versions, you recognize this as a glitch somewhere that should have inserted your first name.

I wouldn’t have minded too much when I got this ezine from a person who bills himself as an expert, except for a couple of things:

  1. I never asked to be put on his ezine list, and never answered an opt in request
  2. His area of expertise is directed towards something I have no interest in doing
  3. I am not in his targeted audience of potential clients

He lost all credibility with me. I stopped reading after the first 5 paragraphs. Why? The first 5 paragraphs made excessive use of these pronouns:

I, me, my, they, their, them

It wasn’t until I scrolled 1/2 way down (and it was a long article too) that I found the word "you."

If you want to engage readers in reading your ezine, shouldn’t you use the word "you?" I think so.

Next time you meet someone at a workshop and get their business card, be sure to ask if you can put them on your email list and then send them an invitation. That way you don’t annoy people with your stuff.

His area of expertise? Selling and persuading. You’d think he’d know better, no?

Categories : Email Marketing Tips, Managing Your Ezine & Blog Tasks

Advertorial: Step 9- A Clear Call to Action

By Patsi Krakoff
Thursday, May 31st, 2007

Buy_it_keyboard The final section of a good advertorial asks readers to do something. It follows your irresistible offer, where you sweeten the pot by throwing in bonuses and extra features. But why should anyone act now?

Unless you mention reasons to act now, people will put it off, maybe say they will think it over, and then forget about it. You should include scarcity and urgency in your copy to get your readers to act and act now.

How can you let people know that your offer is only good for a certain time period, or until a certain number of sales or registrations is reached? The key is to be rigorously honest and authentic. Anything less and you will trigger your readers’ BS antennae and they will abandon at the point of purchase.

I once got an email promoting an ebook in which the author insisted there were only a few copies left. That’s actually a pretty funny thing to say since most people know ebooks are digital publications, but the author destroyed his credibility by not letting people know it was a joke.

If you are doing a teleseminar and the telephone line really truly is limited to 100 or 1000 people, it better be true. Most people know that when registrations fill up, the professional can simply get a bigger bridge line.

Including scarcity and urgency issues in your advertorial makes a lot of sense, as long as you are honest.

Read More→

Categories : Email Marketing Tips, Online Marketing, Writing Great Copy
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